Archive for August 2009

So I love the Modern aesthetic, but this is pushing it for me. This house is 450 square feet, all white interior and exterior. The interior however is a bit more organically arranged, with natural wood accents and awesome concrete counter tops. The house also features a built in car port and is situated on a very small lot in down town Tokyo.

I’ll say this now, this has nothing to do with Tiny Houses or Tiny Living, its just a soap box moment. So if you don’t feel like reading this, it’s OK, my feelings won’t be hurt

So I found this website today and I thought it had to be a joke, but it absolutely legitimate (whois report for http://www.365black.com/). This website is a for African-American Customers Only. It talks about how McDonald’s is for African Americans. I am astonished because this is essentially separate but equal being rehashed. I think its also McDonalds saying things about African Americans, not in a good way. A company has a responsibility to be equally diverse and follow Equal Opportunity Act, but this seems a bit far….is it just me?

At McDonald’s®, we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year â€” not just during Black History Month. That’s the idea behind 365Black.com. It’s a place where you can learn more about education, employment, career advancement and entrepreneurship opportunities, and meet real people whose lives have been touched by McDonald’s.

To balance this off I found this website called “Stuff White People Like”Here

So my hosting company randomly decided to switch me to a different server. It threw some kinks into the process and photos seemed to go away. please let me know with the poll if you can see photos/videos. If you have any other issues with the site or have a suggestion for the site design itself please put it in the comments.

Big Box Stores are often given a bad wrap, though they seem to firmly fill a need in our lives. This bad wrap is often justified for many good reasons. But what if we were to rethink about their function, their form, their purpose, their method? The Reburbia contest got me thinking about this interesting spin on Big Box stores.

Take for example Ikea. If you have ever been in one of these they are huge! I’m not talking about Sam’s club huge or Costco huge, no no, Ikea makes these stores look like mini-me. The average Sam’s or Costco 190,000 square feet, Ikea 300,000 and up!

That is allot of space, what if we could repurpose that space or repurpose the space of an empty warehouse, closed walmart etcetera to become a giant living grocery store. When I say living grocery store, this is what I mean.

The interior of the structure will be converted to a giant greenhouse, where the aisles of shelves are now long raised bed rows of plants that the customers walk down and pick their food. The guy that used to stock the shelves of produce section will now show you how to harvest it all, offer up recipes and dietary advice. All the vegetables and fruit will be grown on site. Chicken and beef will also be done free range in the area surrounding the store and some of the massive parking lot will be converted back to green space. The store’s power could even come from wind mills on the property. Imagine how much better your buying experience would be when its filled with shades of greens instead of harsh lights, neutral color tiles and obnoxious advertisements.

If you have ever been to an EarthFare grocery store, you could have a similar dining area, with daily selections of hot food (they make them daily, all organic and from scratch). Where I used to live, Asheville, NC, the grocery store also had a community center that anyone could rent and yoga, meditation, art classes were held. This store could have something similar teaching classes on gardening, farming, and sustainability etcetera.

Many of us know about the Urban Homestead, path to freedom. They grow 10,000 pounds of produce on a 1/10 of an acre 20 minutes from downtown LA with only four people. If you scale that to the size of Ikea, you are looking at 650,000 pounds of produce! Ikea’s are often built on 40 acre lots, so figure 15 for the building and parking. I have read you can raise chickens under free range conditions at 400 an acre. If you were to bring in feed, you could support a decent number of cows per acre.

Imagine how your relationship with food would change? You would be forced to by local, to by seasonal, to know exactly what went into your food. How would this impact the cost when you eliminate transportation, gasoline, repackaging, and merchandising. Would this work, what are your thoughts on this?

So I have to say this is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Goat Patrol is a company that comes to your home, they set up fences, then unleash a herd of goats onto an area that needs to be cleared. This is ingenious because if you have ever seen kudzu, which you can eat by the by, this stuff has a habit of taking over in an unreal way.

The biggest advantage to this method is of course it’s pretty ecofriendly and the goats will truck through some really dense stuff. Its basically an all you can eat buffet for them. The appeal to me is if you have poison ivy or poison sumac, they love it! The owner says they seem to specifically seek it out and if you ever had to clear this stuff yourself, you know how much of a godsend this would be.
I think it would be interesting to see if you would be able to pool your neighbors goats (if you live in a farming area) you could get 100 goats going and make serious headway.